Prompt: Vertical Horizon's "Consolation"
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Emma Swan, Captain Hook
Set after Season 3, Episode 6: "Ariel"
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Let's just sit a while and watch the cars go by,Maybe save the talking for another time.I just want make it to a better day.I wonder where they go to make it all okay.
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After they set up camp, she slipped off under the guise of finding fresh drinking water. She heard … someone calling her name, but she didn't look back. When she felt she was far enough away, she stopped walking and sat down at the base of a tree, her feet flat on the ground and her knees in the air. For the first time, she noticed that her breathing was ragged. Calm down, she needed to calm down. She needed to breathe.
Echo Cave, her ass. That damn thing was torture. One emotional gut-punch after another. So, to recap: a pirate was falling in love with her, because yeah, that was what she needed right now. Her father couldn't leave this godforsaken island, because right, why should her family be complete? She wished the father of her son was dead, because sure, why should Henry have a complete family, either? Her mother wanted another baby …
Her breathing grew even more ragged.
She knew what happened when parents had another baby. She'd had her world ripped out from under her once already when parents had another baby, and she hated that her mother's confession had turned her back into that scared and confused three-year-old who didn't understand why the only parents she'd ever known were giving her back.
It was an utterly childish response, she knew. One kid doesn't replace another. And she knew she wasn't easy to get to know. She was trying, though … trying so hard to let them in, but she didn't know how to make them understand that twenty-eight years of pain and hurt and anger doesn't go away overnight. She needed time, time to learn to trust and learn to love and learn to be a daughter. She wasn't progressing fast enough for them, she guessed, because if she was, maybe her mother wouldn't feel this way.
But damn it all to hell, she was trying. And it wasn't enough and why the hell couldn't she just be someone's one and only for once in her life? Why the hell couldn't ...
A sound in the jungle caught her attention, a rustle of leaves. She shot to her feet and unsheathed her sword in one swift motion to face none other than Captain Hook himself. "Oh, it's you," she said as she dropped the sword, her voice a low monotone.
"Don't sound so happy to see me, love," he replied, giving her a light smirk.
"Not in the mood, if you couldn't tell." Emma sat back down against the tree and swallowed a groan when he sat at the base of the trunk as well, not exactly next to her but still within her line of sight. "Really not in the mood."
He tensed for the briefest of moments before letting out a sigh so soft that she at first thought it was the wind. "If you want me to leave you on your own, by all means tell me, and I shall."
Though she desperately wanted to tell him to go away, she couldn't seem to make the words come. Instead, she didn't say anything, choosing to stare straight ahead while running everything over and over in her head. Her stomach knotted as she fought the tears that were threatening to spill over.
Throughout it all, Hook didn't say a word. She could feel his eyes on her, feel him watching her every ragged breath, but he didn't say anything, for which she was absurdly grateful.
Eventually she managed to calm herself down, physically. Emotionally was another story. Her mother's words reverberated in her head, mingling with memories of love and loss and a little girl holding a small suitcase that contained everything she owned in the world. A little girl being shuffled from group home to foster family to group home to foster family, never once mattering to anyone she met. A teenager stupidly believing her first love, believing his tales of love and home and happiness. A teenager giving up her child because she couldn't even take care of herself, never mind a baby. A grown woman finally finding her place in this world in a little town in Maine, fighting tooth and nail for what was hers.
A grown woman finding her parents. A grown woman now feeling like she was losing her parents, now feeling like that little girl with the suitcase all over again.
Pan had threatened to really make her an orphan. Was this the first step?
"She's right, you know," she said after far more than the five minutes she'd originally wanted. She'd almost expected Hook to have left but he hadn't. Surprisingly, he'd stayed beside her through the silence. "I can't give her what she wants. What she deserves. I'm not eight years old anymore and I don't need a mommy and a daddy. I get it. I just … wish I knew what it was about me that I'm never enough."
"Love–"
"No, really. I wasn't enough for any one of the families I lived with growing up. I wasn't enough for Neal. And now I'm not enough for my own mother. Just once, I'd like be enough for someone."
"You're enough for your lad," Hook pointed out gently. "And you're enough for me."
The words made her heart skip a beat. It wasn't a line; she could see the sincerity in his eyes.
"I'm not going to, as Neal so eloquently put it, 'fight for you,'" he assured her. "I'm simply telling you a truth. You, Emma Swan, are enough for someone." She swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that were pricking her eyes. Before she could say a word, he continued, "I wish she hadn't had to admit that in front of you."
"You and me both," she muttered.
He gave her a small smile. After a moment, he pulled his flask from his coat pocket and handed it over to her. "As you once pointed out, rum is indeed my solution to everything, so drink up, love."
She accepted the flask and took a nice long gulp. She'd never cared for rum previously, but Hook's brand of rum was smooth, sweet, and held hints of a spice that she couldn't quite place. It was also pretty much lethal in terms of proof, which was quite the added bonus tonight.
When she handed the flask back to him, he gave her a teasing pout. "That's all? I was hoping to get you drunk tonight."
"Don't push your luck, pirate," she shot back, hiding the small smile on her lips at his teasing.
After a moment, he said, "You do realize that they're going to be looking for us soon."
She shrugged. Let them come. "Let's just sit a while, all right?"
"As you wish," he replied, leaning his head back against the tree.
That time, she couldn't hide her smile. She wasn't okay, not by a long shot, but she was surprised to find that a little bit of consolation from a pirate was not entirely unwelcome.
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